Longtime Contractors Lose ERIC Units

Washington--The Educational Testing Service and the National Council
of Teachers of English have lost their bids for new, five-year
contracts to continue running two of the federally funded information
clearinghouses on education.

Each organization has operated an Educational Resources Information
Center for
more than 17 years. Indiana University, which ran an eric clearinghouse
on reading from 1968 through 1975, outbid the ncte to win a $2-million
contract to operate the clearinghouse on reading and communication
skills.

The ets lost its bid to the American Institutes for Research, a
Washington-based group that will operate the clearinghouse on tests,
measurement, and evaluation for one to five years.

Contracts for 13 of the 16 clearinghouses expired on Dec. 31 and
others will expire this year. Although not all of the negotiations are
complete, the Education Department is expected to renew agreements with
at least 13 of the universities and nonprofit education associations
that currently operate centers.

A third center may also change hands, however. New Mexico State
University, whose contract to run the clearinghouse on rural education
and small schools expires in March, is competing for a new contract
with Texas Tech University and the Appalachian Regional Laboratory.

Education Department officials declined last week to comment on the
new awards, saying that they would wait to make a statement until all
contracts were awarded, possibly by the end of this month.

But Indiana University and air officials speculated that their
proposals to disseminate information to a wider audience may have
swayed the federal reviewers in their favor.

The 21-year-old eric clearinghouses--the most widely used
educational databank in the nation--collect and disseminate a wide
range of education-related documents, including unpublished research
studies, conference proceedings, journal articles, and indexes.

A 1986 Education Department plan to redesign the eric system, later
scrapped in the face of opposition from researchers and members of the
Congress, called for measures to enable the centers to reach a wider
audience.

Loss 'A Tragedy'

Officials at the ncte, which has operated an eric clearinghouse
since 1968, reacted with surprise and dismay at the news that they had
lost their contract bid.

"The highest-rated clearinghouse in the country is now out of
business," said John C. Maxwell, executive director of the council.
"That's a tragedy."

Mr. Maxwell said he suspected that the Education Department "has a
bias against" allowing professional associations to operate information
services, and he noted that his association has taken political
positions that are at odds with those of the Reagan Administration.

He stressed, however, that the information service had been
completely separate from the council's political activities. "We have
kept the eric thing squeaky clean," he said.

No Conflict of Interest

Officials of the ets, which has operated the clearinghouse on
testing since its inception in 1970, denied that political
considerations--including conflict-of-interest charges against the
testing organization--played any role in last month's decision to award
the $270,000 testing-center contract to air

"My own feeling is, air is a respectable organization; they can
pre4pare a good proposal," said Alice Irby, vice president for field
services of the Princeton, N.J., test publisher.

"We wish them well," she added. "We have no reason to believe they
won't do a fine job."

In 1986, a group of 36 researchers, led by the National Center for
Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), a Cambridge, Mass., advocacy group,
asked the department to investigate ets's relationship with the
clearinghouse. They charged that the testing firm could not disseminate
unbiased information because of its financial interest in tests.

Education Department officials rejected the charges and supported
the company.

Broader Dissemination

Officials of the two groups that wrested the contracts from the ncte
and the ets said last week that they were probably able to outbid their
more established rivals because their proposals emphasized wide
dissemination of information.

"I suspect it was because we have a strong commitment to disseminate
the information to the general public--to parents and the community,
not just the research community," said Carl B. Smith, professor of
education, who will direct the new iu center.

"Typically, eric has served the research community, and done it
quite well," he added. "But we plan to make a number of information
products available to a broader spectrum of people."

Mr. Smith said he has contacted the Education Writers Association,
which has agreed to distribute to its members a newsletter listing
materials and research data collected by the center. The Association of
American Publishers has also agreed to distribute a similar report to
textbook publishers, he said.

Mr. Smith also noted that he and other university officials have had
experience in operating an eric center. He served for two years as
co-director of the center for reading, which the university operated
for seven years before the center was merged with the ncte's
clearinghouse on communications skills.

Indiana also houses the clearinghouse on social studies and
social-science education, but the two centers will remain separate
entities, according to John Patrick, director of the university's
social-studies development center.

Lawrence M. Rudner, project director for the American Institutes for
Research, said his firm planned "to emphasize practitioners and users"
of testing products in its dissemination efforts.

The firm could produce, for example, documents for statisticians
explaining how test standards are set, or materials to help teachers
and parents understand test scores, Mr. Rudner said.

Air has extensive experience in explaining technical material to a
general audience, Mr. Rudner said, noting that it has had a contract
with the Ford Motor Company to produce owners' manuals for the Ford
Taurus automobile.

Staff Writer Julie A. Miller contributed to this report.

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